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Notes -
Do Trump Supporters Actually Want To Win?
Prompted by this sanctimonious, if interesting, FT column. Emphasis mine:
For a long time, a certain pro-Trump (or anti-anti-Trump, if you want) narrative on the 'intellectual right' was that there was no real alternative to Trump. Sure, they conceded that most criticisms of Trump-the-man were correct, but this was the Flight 93 Election. The alternatives were all versions of Mitt Romney or Marco Rubio, who didn't say the things Trump occasionally did. We can restate the Flight 93 theory like this:
DeSantis' presence complicates the Flight 93 theory. DeSantis has a record of some competence on conservative issues. Certainly not enough for the very online dissident right, but they had soured on Trump by late 2017 themselves, and so have no horse in this race. Whether DeSantis of Yale and Harvard is a 'true believer' is a complicated question, but then again the same could be said about Trump of New York via Wharton; the former certainly seems a much more capable administrator.
The column posits that Trump's success against DeSantis in this phony war stage of the 2024 primary campaign is a case of "vibes based politics" winning over 'substance based politics'. In 2016, intellectual conservatives could defend Trump because - whatever the vibes were - he was the only candidate on substance, too. In 2023, the banality of Trump's support is more clear. Ironically, it leads to a case for an interesting question - if Trump had merely attached his vibe to Ted Cruz' political platform in 2016, would he still have won? Was it less 'build the wall' and more who the frontman for building the wall was? The smart case for Trump would seem to be reducible to:
DeSantis is a "phony" or establishment conservative who will turn in office and resign himself to implementing the Mitch McConnell checklist of tax cuts, deregulation, more money for the military and cutting some welfare spending. The problem with this is that Trump was in office and accomplished little but (some of) the above, and hardly has a lifelong history of staunch conservative politics himself. If the problem is associating with elite circles, Trump has a long history of the same.
DeSantis can't win the presidential election even if he takes the primary, Trump can. This argument is more persuasive, if only because Trump's record shows he has technically convinced enough people in the right places to vote for him to show he can win. But Trump also lost a presidential election, never hit a 50% approval rating (even once, something Biden has apparently managed) and seems not to be experiencing any great groundswell of public support from swing voters. The promise of Trump is now tainted by the reality of Trump, so MAGA might ring slightly more hollow to those who aren't true believers.
I love this line because thinking about what your enemies fear is often an interesting thought experiment. Republicans are being presented with a choice between Trump and an American Viktor Orban. Nothing is settled, but they appear to strongly prefer the former.
I think you need to think long and hard what you mean by "Trump Supporters" and "win" here. The simple fact that the race is effectively between MAGA: Original Recipe and MAGA: Hard Seltzer with nary an old-fashioned Patrician, Evangelical, or Romney-esque moderate in sight is in my eyes an illustration just how thoroughly Trump's Supporters have already won.
As I wrote back in September, The war for the soul of the Grand old Party is over and the populists have won. Sure, there are still a few members of the old establishment like Mitch McConnel hanging around, but at this stage they're just running out the clock. When they get replaced, they will be replaced by guys who came up through the Tea-Party and MAGA movements.
Likewise, I find it telling that the only criticism of DeSantis that seems to have really gained any real traction in conservative spaces is the suggestion that he might be too "establishment", or that he lacks the necessary self-destructive streak to fight the beast. But this is were also many of the choices that yourself and other posters here have described as "unforced errors" and "stupid stunts" start to look like the products of an astute tactical mind, because when the accusation that DeSantis is an establishment republican is leveled the counter that "would an 'establishment Republican' have picked a fight with Disney, or bused economic migrants to Martha's Vinyard" is already on the way.
Well, there are old-fashioned Patrician, Evangelical, and Romney-esque moderates in sight, they're a bunch of the other candidates in the republican primary. But first-past-the-post voting means they don't have a chance since they're not the established front-runners, so no one will vote for them. I'm not sure how best to measure popularity objectively.
It's something of a Keynesian beauty contest, in that people don't want to waste their vote, and want the candidate to be able to win the general election, so they have to think about how everyone else will vote, not merely whoever their favorite.
Name 3, Heck name one that users here could be reasonably expected to recognize without the aid of google, and then post how they're polling compared to Trump and/or Desantis.
While I concede the possibility that a dark horse candidate may emerge (of those declared my money would be on Scott or Haley who are both still at least MAGA adjacent), as it stands this is a race between Trump and DeSantis. No one else is even close.
Most of them could be categorized to some extent as evangelical, almost everyone comes across as more pious than Trump. But I can't name any who are clearly moderates that could be expected to be recognized, as they're irrelevant.
Everyone except Trump and Desantis are doing absolutely miserably in the polls, and mostly only have a chance if one of the frontrunners withdraws or dies.
I wasn't trying to say they had a chance, just that they existed. I don't know that we disagree, really.
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